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Mozilla The Internet

Mozilla Thunderbird Reaches 1.0 464

Posted by CmdrTaco from the spam-clients dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Mozilla Thunderbird 1.0 is now available for download on Mozilla's FTP server." Here is the press release announcing the release. Virtual folders and RSS integration, coupled with the recent hype surrounding Firefox, might give this sucker some serious momentum.
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Mozilla Thunderbird Reaches 1.0 More

Mozilla Thunderbird Reaches 1.0

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  • Release Notes (Score:5, Informative)

    by Tiberius_Fel ( 770739 ) <fel.empirereborn@net> on Tuesday December 07, 2004 @09:19AM (#11017486)
    Release notes are available here: http://www.mozilla.org/products/thunderbird/releas es/ [mozilla.org]

    • Coincidentally, I decided to switch to firefox+thunderbird (or, failing that, firefox+mozillamail) just last night. And they seem nice and all, but it's infuriatingly stupid that

      • clicking on a mailto link in firefox doesn't bring up thunderbird, or anything else
      • clicking on links in thunderbird -- whether in a message, or in a thunderbird dialog bix -- doesn't bring up a browser

      I understand and appreciate that, unlike Windows, there's no standard *nix API for these sorts of things. But it looks like

      • Sounds like you'd really be happier with the complete suite.
        That way your irc:// links will work, your mailto: links...

        For someone who depends on all the pieces with complete integration, what's wrong with just using the suite?
        (yes, I know someone will spout some B.S. about bloat. They use the Gecko base people! Odds are Mozilla will use *less* memory since the libraries are more likely to be shared while you just might have different Thunderbird/Firebird versions.

        • Um, no. It's not BS.

          I don't know what Gecko is. I don't care. I shouldn't have to.

          What I do know is that Mozilla takes 10+ seconds to start up on my Linux box, and has fewer extensions and whatnot that I can find. For some of our debug-mode product builds, I have to quit Mozilla to free up enough swap space.

          Firefox loads in a blink, and never needs to go away.

          I'm not asking for complete integration. I know that there's going to be some duplication, e.g., now I have to enter my master password

      • Well for me it works.

        I'm using gnome, so to do that all I needed to do was to go in Application --> Desktop Preferences --> Advanced --> Preferred Applications
        And there, I set my default browser and my default mail client!
      • If it makes you feel any better, thunderbird on my windows xp system won't launch firefox, which IS set as my default browser. I have to copy and paste links.

      • Re:Still no call-out to a browser? (Score:4, Informative)

        by adamfranco ( 600246 ) <adam@adamfranco.cMENCKENom minus author> on Wednesday December 08, 2004 @12:18AM (#11029125) Homepage
        Here you go, some "HowTos" I made up:

        To get Firefox to open the Thunderbird (or any other) email client when clicking on a "mailto" link, do the following steps:

        1. Enter the address "about:config" in the Firefox address-bar. This will allow you to set new preferences.
        2. Right-click somewhere on the window and select "New" --> "String".
        3. In the window that pops up, enter:
        network.protocol-handler.app.mailto
        as the name of the preference.
        4. Hit OK and then enter the path to your thunderbird executable in the next window. For me it is /usr/local/bin/thunderbird/thunderbird

        To get Firefox to open when you click on links in Thunderbird, a similar process is followed.

        Since thunderbird doesn't have an easy way to use about:config, you need to edit the preferences file with a text editor.

        1. Close Thunderbird first as it will overwrite any configuration changes when it exits.
        2. Open the Thunderbird "prefs.js" file located in you home directory, probably named something like: /home/afranco/.thunderbird/Profiles/jafwe232js.def ault/prefs.js
        3. Add the following three lines to the prefs.js file:
        user_pref("network.protocol-handler.app.http", "/usr/local/bin/firefox/firefox");
        user_pref("network.protocol-handler.app.https", "/usr/local/bin/firefox/firefox");
        user_pref("network.protocol-handler.app.ftp", "/usr/local/bin/firefox/firefox");

        --Adam

  • Icons (Score:2, Informative)

    by ack154 ( 591432 )
    Mmm... since 1.0PR - new, pretty icons!

    • Re:Icons (Score:5, Interesting)

      by gclef ( 96311 ) on Tuesday December 07, 2004 @10:31AM (#11018490)
      Actually, one of the things I'd love to see in Thunderbird, but may take a while, is tabbed accounts similar to the tabbed browsing for Mozilla. In other words, each email account would appear in Thunderbird as a tab. (You could put a little email icon in the tab if that account has new mail.)

      That would (I think) clear up some valuable window real-estate for those of us with multiple email accounts.

      • Redirect (was Re:Icons (Score:3, Interesting)

        by frisket ( 149522 )
        Tabbed accounts would be cool. I'm downloading it as I write, so I haven't seen it yet, but The One Thing missing last time was a Redirect feature (like Evolution's Redirect, or Elm's "B" button) which lets me forward mail to the right person without making it look like I sent it -- it preserves the original From and Sender and Reply-To so that the recipient can work as if the mail was originally sent to them.

        This is utterly essential for anyone working in support, as you constantly get mail which needs to

  • Memory Footprint (Score:4, Interesting)

    by TrollBridge ( 550878 ) on Tuesday December 07, 2004 @09:21AM (#11017510) Homepage Journal
    Maybe it's just my own perception, but Thunderbird seems to be a bit bulky, judging by how long it takes to open. Am I totally out of my league here, or is Thunderbird a little chunky?

    • Re:Memory Footprint (Score:3, Informative)

      by ack154 ( 591432 ) *
      Doesn't seem very slow to me, but I'm opening it on a 2.8ghz w/ 1gb ram. Do you have an older system? Any extensions/themes installed? Have you tried to recreate the profile?
      • Takes about four seconds to open for me, under Linux, with .2 gigs less than you. And we're high end, believe it or not. God forbid you have an old Pentium box around and you're looking for a mail client.

        No extensions/themes, at all. I'll admit I haven't re-created my profile since .6, but really. And people look at me as though I'm a freak when I tell them I like text-only clients.
    • Seems a little large here as well. On Windows I've been running Foxmail since forever, and it does everything mail related very well in much less memory.

      The RSS/newsgroup functionality of Thunderbird is great, but the memory footprint is huge.

    • Re:Memory Footprint (Score:2, Interesting)

      by at2000 ( 715252 ) *
      Agree. When I was running it on PIII 700 + 128MB RAM, it is really a lot slower than Outlook Express. But on P4 1.4G + 256MB RAM it rocks! Even better on faster machines.

    • Re:Memory Footprint (Score:5, Interesting)

      by ConceptJunkie ( 24823 ) on Tuesday December 07, 2004 @09:30AM (#11017648) Homepage Journal
      It is a little sluggish, however, it's still an order of magnitude (literally) faster than Outlook when both have a large message store.

      Outlook was taking 30 seconds or more to open a folder, which was one of the reasons I dropped it for Thunderbird several months ago.

      Ironically, Outlook Express never had this kind of problem.

      • Re:Memory Footprint (Score:5, Funny)

        by Paleomacus ( 666999 ) on Tuesday December 07, 2004 @09:39AM (#11017752)
        It's that 'Express' in the title. It makes things go faster!
        • It also doesn't lose data once your store gets to about a gig or gig-and-a-half in size, so I guess "Express" also means "doesn't suck".

          (Frickin' two minute thingy completely infuriates me. Hey, Slashbots, some of us can think fast enough to write more than once good comment every two minutes. I suggest one minute (and 15 seconds for writing a comment, because quick witty responses don't always take 20 seconds. I'm really sick of "Slow down, cowboy." Wake up, CowboyNeal, et al, I'm not the usual mouth-

      • Re:Memory Footprint (Score:3, Insightful)

        by soulsteal ( 104635 )
        You mention Outlook, so I assume you had all your mail stored in PST files on the hard drive. Outlook has trouble with PST files thaty get to around 1.5 GB or so. At that size, PST access gets sluggish. There's a hard-coded limit somewhere around 2 GB that, once you reach it, will corrupt your data.

        This can be avoided by making multiple PST files.
    • Launch the executable with the command line flag -turbo. This will cause the libraries it uses etc. to stay loaded (The same works for firefox). Youll see much better speed.
    • Thunderbird? Chunky? Thunderchunky(Props to late 80's prep-rappers "DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince).

    • Re:Memory Footprint (Score:5, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 07, 2004 @09:42AM (#11017792)
      Yeah, it's chunky, but being able to run the newest Thunderbird is worth the cost of you upgrading to a 486.
    • Just FYI, I've just installed 1.0. It does here (512MB, 1.2Ghz) seem noticably nippier than 0.9, both in terms of opening folders and starting up.

  • Any other choice? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by at2000 ( 715252 ) *
    If I don't want Outlook Express, Mozilla Mail&News and Mozilla Thunderbird, what else *Open Source* e-mail clients can I choose in Windows?
    • > what else *Open Source* e-mail clients can I choose in Windows?

      Pirated Outlook.
    • Hmm, what specific features are you looking for in your mail client, exactly?

    • Re:Any other choice? (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      http://sylpheed-claws.sourceforge.net/win32/ [sourceforge.net]
      • Incidentally, Sylpheed-Claws win32 maintainer has just returned after a long period of inactivity (or rather, real-life activity), and has released the win32 version of sylpheed-claws 0.9.13 just yesterday, a few hours after the regular 0.9.13 version.
    • I googled [google.com] and found this [sourceforge.net] in thirty secords...

      J.

      • Following this logic, in about three years there will be no discussion of anything on the Internet since the answer to every question will be to Google for it.

        This will work for a while until we reach the point where new knowledge cannot be "Googled" because the prospect for new content for Google has been sabatouged by people who reply with "Google for it" to every question.

        Get it?

    • Re:Any other choice? (Score:5, Funny)

      by Finuvir ( 596566 ) <rparle@@@soylentred...net> on Tuesday December 07, 2004 @09:37AM (#11017731) Homepage

      If I don't want Outlook Express, Mozilla Mail&News and Mozilla Thunderbird, what else *Open Source* e-mail clients can I choose in Windows?

      Telnet

    • Re:Any other choice? (Score:5, Informative)

      by rduke15 ( 721841 ) <rduke15NO@SPAMgmail.com> on Tuesday December 07, 2004 @09:38AM (#11017748)
      Open Source other than Mozilla, all I can think of would be Pine.

      The "Program for Internet News & Email [washington.edu]" from University of Washington. Version 4.58

      If you need a multi platform program, this one seems to cover them all. Amiga, BeOS, VMS, you name it... It looks like it even runs on a plain text terminal, so I could probably set it up to handle my mail on my 486 Linux firewall. Or maybe on my coffee machine? I'll have to look whether there is a pre-compiled version for La Pavoni [lapavoni.com] (because the Pavoni's don't come with a compiler).

      But even though I do like text terminals, shells and command lines, I don't think that is how I would like to manage my email. Not even to spare my eyes all the pictures and colors the HTML spam throws at them.

      For me, I'm still staying with Eudora, and only occasionally use Thunderbird when I want to send an HTML mail, and it's a bit too complex for Eudora, but not enough to use Dreamweaver and put it on a web site. Eudora is neither open source nor even free (there is a "sponsored" version with ads), and does not run on Linux. However, on Windows (or Mac), it's still the best I know: plain text mail storage, separation of atachments, regular expression searches, and the most powerful filtering I have seen (on any arbitrary header and/or the body, including with regex'es, and with several "actions" happening sequentially with filtered mails)

      • Pine isn't open source (Score:3, Informative)

        by Noksagt ( 69097 )

        Open Source other than Mozilla, all I can think of would be Pine.

        I use Pine. I love it as an IMAP client (and of the cross-platform email clients, it is, with Mulberry (which I also use), still one of the top two IMAP clients out there). But it isn't open source. PC-Pine (the native port to win32) is a completely closed source product. It is available gratis (which is more than I can say for Mulberry), but without source. Furthermore, the Pine license for the *nix code is restrictive enough that many c

      • Re:Any other choice? (Score:3, Informative)

        by Etyenne ( 4915 )
        More power to you if you like Eudora. I don't. We did a very large scale mail server installation (85K accounts) in an organisation that used to have Eudora as the standard MUA. A lot of users of Eudora 5 in the wild. Like everything, bug happen and get corrected so I should not judge the actual quality of a software by it's older releases, but some of them are just too good to pass.

        For example, we had to disable STARTTLS IMAP extension because an older release of Eudora was sending STARTSSL. Yes, yo
    • Sorry, I should have said "Graphical" e-mail clients in parent. Thank you for your suggestions and it really confirms my belief: we really have no choice, except text-based and much less well-known ones. But we do have some choices for browser, though most of them are still Gecko-based.

    • Re:Any other choice? (Score:2, Insightful)

      by MoThugz ( 560556 )
      Why must you restrict it to Open Source ones?

      If it's a matter of $$$, there are lots of good freeware email clients out there.

      If you're really someone who does things "in the spirit of libre software", you wouldn't be using Windows in the first place.

      So there are tons of them... check out freshmeat.net or nonags.com to see some.
    • Mutt.

      No, really. It sucks less than all the others.

      Really.
    • Any reason you insist on Open _Source_? Are you going to hack on it / compile your own version? Or are you just expecting others to do it? If so - why would that matter to you whether it's Open Source or just free as in beer? I just ask because I kinda believe / am interested in "cheap software model". I mean - > $100 is outrageous for an OS that includes basically nothing and sold in close to billion numbers. OTOH - $10 would be a fair price and still may give developers some incentive to work on it (no
    • Grab the Cygwin installer and have it install mutt.
  • Or do I have to wander the maze of twisty little directories in Microsoft's "Documents and Settings" directory to find where it stores mail.

    Remember, it's in "Application Data" and not "Local Settings\Application Data", and also please note all these directories for hidden for some stupid reason.

    I'd be happy if I could just specify where the data is stored like most apps (even Microsoft ones).

    Don't get me wrong, I love using Thunderbird and switched from Outlook shortly after I realized how deeply flawe
    • You've always been able to specify mail directory locations. I don't have a copy of Thunderbird here right now (my home directory in college is barely enough for Firefox) but I believe the option is in Account Settings (seperate for each account, though I presume there's an option for the new global inbox too).

    • Re:But will it let me backup my mail store? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Bricklets ( 703061 ) on Tuesday December 07, 2004 @09:32AM (#11017671)
      I'd be happy if I could just specify where the data is stored like most apps (even Microsoft ones).

      Use the Profile Manager to specify where you want your data stored. I've kept my mail in the My Documents folder since forever.

      • Do you still have to create a dummy set-up in the default place before you can do this? In previous versions, it seemed to be necessary, and then you created a new profile with the data store wherever you wanted it, but it was always counter-intuitive for users and a pain for those of us hackers who wanted to shift things around until we worked out what it was doing There must be an easier way...

    • Re:But will it let me backup my mail store? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by MobyDisk ( 75490 ) on Tuesday December 07, 2004 @09:32AM (#11017673) Homepage
      That's like complaining that a Linux application stores user data in the user's home directory and system-level data in /etc. That's the standard, it's how all applications are supposed to work. FireFox follows Microsoft's standards to the letter, thus allowing multiple users to have separate FireFox profiles, and allowing non-administrators to run the software. (Woe is me! If only most off-the-shelf applications adhered to that standard) And yes, you can override those settings if you want.
      • FireFox follows Microsoft's standards to the letter

        I realize that. So where are the "backup" and "restore" features? I use robocopy from the appropriate directory, but it would be nice if this were implemented in the app. When I reinstalled after replacing a harddrive, I had to find the data store, copy it, and after I reinstalled Thunderbird, copy that directory back in and pray it would actually work.

        Fortunately it did, but this is not user-friendly by any definition.

    • Re:But will it let me backup my mail store? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Flooded77 ( 730881 ) on Tuesday December 07, 2004 @09:53AM (#11017903)
      If you're paranoid (like me), just get Mozbackup [jasnapaka.com]. It will make a backup file of your Thunderbird/Firefox/Mozilla profiles (and mail). I've had no problem with it.

  • MOOX optimized versions? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by zippity8 ( 446412 ) on Tuesday December 07, 2004 @09:26AM (#11017582)
    Has anyone tried these? I was googling for a torrent and came across this win32 optimized version (depending on your processor).

    MOOX optimized versions [www.moox.ws]
    NOTE: This is a third party / unofficial build.
    • Yep, I swear by them. The M2 build is significantly snappier on my Athlon XP at home and the M3 build is significanlty snappier on my P4 at work.

    • optimizing a mail client is pointless (Score:5, Informative)

      by SuperBanana ( 662181 ) on Tuesday December 07, 2004 @09:34AM (#11017683)
      came across this win32 optimized version (depending on your processor).

      [siiigh]. Considering much of what a mail client does is either disk or display, and not very repetitive, processor-specific optimizations will do little to no good. Even search functions are largely disk constrained if the mailbox is big enough that search time becomes an issue on any modern system.

      If it was a Pi calculator, or a game (in which a miniscule difference in per-frame loop time makes a huge difference in frame rate) I could see the point, but this is just silly

    • I'm sure any difference is completely unnoticeable, because like most apps, e-mail would be highly I/O bound.

      Just how much horsepower could an e-mail app need?

  • CCK please (Score:5, Interesting)

    by lopingrhondo ( 186235 ) on Tuesday December 07, 2004 @09:28AM (#11017610) Homepage
    I'm still waiting for a Firefox/Thunderbird CCK that will let me customize them in a way that would make distribution worthwhile here at work. NS through 7.1 gave us the ability to make custom accounts and mail settings before install. Yes, we use Netscape as the default browser/mail suite here. We do exist!

    • Re:CCK please (Score:3, Informative)

      by indicavia ( 838065 )
      Hi! I don't know anything about this kind of stuff, but is this [dbltree.com] what you're looking for?
      It says "Automated deployment of Firefox with extensions, themes, and pre-configuration"

      God bless! :)

  • extensions (Score:4, Interesting)

    by alatesystems ( 51331 ) <chris@NOSpAm.chrisbenard.net> on Tuesday December 07, 2004 @09:28AM (#11017613) Homepage Journal
    I wish the moz foundation would implore the popular extension makers to update their version string. If I upgrade when it comes out, I'm screwed on all my extensions. If I wait, I'm going "when can i upgrade, when can i upgrade?"

    I lose either way. This time I'm going to wait instead of upgrading from .9 for a while until the extensions are ready.

  • Torrent (Score:5, Informative)

    by youngerpants ( 255314 ) on Tuesday December 07, 2004 @09:31AM (#11017655)
    And as the servers take the same hammering they took when Firefox was released, heres a torrent crafted by my own fair hands

    http://www.youngerpants.com/thunderbird.torrent [youngerpants.com]

  • In Other News (Score:5, Funny)

    by NardofDoom ( 821951 ) on Tuesday December 07, 2004 @09:35AM (#11017698)
    "Thunderbird Bad for Advertisers"

    "My business has been cut ten fold by this communist software" say veteran spammer Ima A Shole. "I don't know how anyone expects to have free web sites if they don't let independent businessmen like me advertise porn and \/|@gr.r.r.a."

  • Huh? (Score:3, Funny)

    by sammyo ( 166904 ) on Tuesday December 07, 2004 @09:37AM (#11017727) Journal
    Shouldn't there be a name change at a full dot release?

    Ba ding. :-) :-)

  • T-Bird is missing "Combine and Decode" (Score:3, Interesting)

    by way2slo ( 151122 ) on Tuesday December 07, 2004 @09:37AM (#11017728) Journal
    I have been using T-Bird 0.8 for a while and am generally pleased. However, I still have to fire up Outlook Express once in a while to do one thing. Usenet Newsgroups. Why? T-Bird has no "Combine and Decode" feature.

    Most Newsgroups require that a posted message be no larger than a certain size so to post large files, like mp3's, you must split them appart into several seperate posts. Without the Combine and Decode functionality you cannot put the pieces back together again.

    Granted, Usenet Newsgorups have not gained as much popularity as the rest of the internet but it would still be nice to have. And until this feature is added to T-Bird, then Usenet users like myself will still be forced to use OE. Basically, why run two e-mail clients? It's not a good idea for the average user, so they are going to stick with OE.

    • How do you reach the flawed logical conclusion of "If T-Bird doesn't do combination then Usenet users will have to use Oulook Express"?

      There's a whole class of applications called "newsgroup readers" that might be of some interest to you. I can easily name five freeware ones for Windows off the top of my head. I'll leave it as an excerise to the poster to see if he can find some on his own.

      OE is a singuarly bad newsgroup program. Newsgroup functionality is the worst aspect of that program. Do yourself a

  • Downloaded it, installed it, played with it, uninstalled it.

    I use Pegasus Mail (pmail.com). For all the nice features in Thunderbird, it still seems to me that Pegasus has much more powerful filtering rules. And, at least for my uses, has more features aimed at people who maintain multiple e-mail addresses.

    Pegasus is free, but not open source. I urge people to compare it to Thunderbird. I've used it since 1996 and have never found a mailer I like better.

    - Greg

  • "Find" is painful to use (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Sandor at the Zoo ( 98013 ) on Tuesday December 07, 2004 @09:38AM (#11017744)
    I read a number of mailing list digests, and Thunderbird's "Find" is sooooo painful to use. Here's the scenario: the digest has a list of Subjects from individual emails in the digest. I see one of interest.

    I select the subject of interest. Instead of having a "enter selection for find" command, I have to copy and paste. Fine. However, if the Find dialog is already up, when I hit ctrl-F, the text in the Find dialog isn't selected; I have to select the text, then paste my subject into the box.

    Then I click the Find button. It finds the text and shows it to me at the very bottom of the window. This is so annoying that it's nearly beyond belief. I have to scroll down a bunch to see any context whatsoever.

    So, my request for two enhancements:

    • When you hit ctrl-F, select the frickin' text in the Find dialog.
    • When you scroll the message window to show found text, scroll the found area to the vertical center of the window, not the very bottom.

    OK, so go ahead and flame me for a) not just fixing the application myself, and b) not trying to figure out how to file my own bugs.

    In my own defense, a) I have a day job and a life at night, and b) I started to file some bugs and direction number 1 was "download Mozilla and see if the same bug appears there". I don't use Mozilla, have no interest in it, and don't feel like jumping through hoops to file bugs.

    OK, call me cranky. :-)

    Happy Holidays!

  • Looking to switch (Score:3, Interesting)

    by dfj225 ( 587560 ) on Tuesday December 07, 2004 @09:41AM (#11017771) Homepage Journal
    Recently my parents got an email in outlook express that will cause the program to lock up simply by clicking on the message (even with preview off). So, I'm looking to switch them to Thunderbird for a more stable and secure system. I would like to get their mail from OE into Thunderbird, but I think the mail database that OE creates might be corrupt. I'll give 1.0 a shot tonight and see how things fair.

  • printing contacts suck: I'll wait (Score:3, Informative)

    by denis-The-menace ( 471988 ) on Tuesday December 07, 2004 @09:46AM (#11017838)
    Until I can print 15 or so contacts per sheet, I can't use it.

    It's also a pain to enter phone numbers. If you type 555 5551234 and it keeps it like that. It doesn't reformat to (555)555-1234.

    Until this is fixed, I wait. (BTW: there are no Contact Extensions for it...)

  • Palm sync? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by D'Arque Bishop ( 84624 ) on Tuesday December 07, 2004 @09:54AM (#11017926) Homepage
    First off, congrats to the Mozilla Thunderbird team; I switched to Thunderbird months ago and have been EXTREMELY happy with it, with one exception. Kudos on reaching 1.0.

    Now, the exception I just mentioned happens to be Palm sync capabilities. I managed to get an extension downloaded and installed a version or two ago, but the data would only sync once (changes I made later to the Visor's address book wouldn't sync to Thunderbird), and I couldn't get the extension to install properly in later versions. I can't imagine that I'm the only one who wants to sync a PalmOS-based device to Thunderbird, or that I'm the only one who's had this problem. Checking Google has been little help, either...

    Again, except for this one problem, Thunderbird works great for me. Is there any idea when I can expect this one annoyance to be fixed? (Or get some confirmation I'm the only one having this issue...)
  • If Evolution ends up depending on Mono, I might have to switch to Thunderbird someday. As it is, I have Vim as my editor, running via Evo's Bonobo support, which will probably be going away (maybe it already has in the current version).

    I wonder how I'll get Vi editing in the brave new world of modern GUI mailers. Most likely I'll end up back on Mutt. Virtual folders are nice, though. E-mail clients still have a long way to go, for something we spend so much time using.

  • Portable Thunderbird 1.0 available already (Score:3, Informative)

    by fatwreckfan ( 322865 ) on Tuesday December 07, 2004 @10:00AM (#11018001)
    Portable Thunderbird 1.0 is available already at . Now that's speedy :) I finally have a use for my old 32MB usb key! [johnhaller.com]

  • RSS integration? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Suppafly ( 179830 ) <slashdot AT suppafly DOT net> on Tuesday December 07, 2004 @10:55AM (#11018824)
    I never understood the idea of RSS integration into a mail client.. RSS is generally used to keep up with web data, so why wouldn't you have RSS built into the browser, not the mail client. RSS integration in a mail client is just bloat.
    • It really depends on your perception of RSS. If you think of it as a way to get mini web-pages, then it would make sense to view a feed in a browser. On the other hand, if you think of RSS as a customizable message delivery system or a read-only mailing list, then it makes sense to view a feed from the same client you use to view your other incoming messages.

      Personally, see it as the latter. For me, it seems perfectly reasonable for RSS feeds to appear as folders in my mail client where I already use c

    • Re:RSS integration? (Score:4, Informative)

      by jacobito ( 95519 ) on Tuesday December 07, 2004 @12:52PM (#11020602) Homepage
      Consider the fact that many mail clients (Thunderbird included) integrate NNTP news reading already, which is very similar. RSS/Atom feeds, like NNTP newsgroups, are generally arranged topically (or by folder, or by web site...) and presented serially and chronologically; they lend themselves well to the interfaces typically used by mail clients, which, unlike web browsers, are designed not just for browsing data but for managing data. I personally don't think the web browser is a good client for consuming RSS/Atom feeds; the usage patterns of feeds and web pages are far too different. In fact, I never use Firefox's built-in RSS/Atom support.

  • Still missing much needed features.. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by d_jedi ( 773213 ) on Tuesday December 07, 2004 @11:45AM (#11019592)
    like combine and decode (ie. multi-part messages),
    yEnc encoding,
    etc.

  • Still not feature complete (Score:5, Insightful)

    by anticypher ( 48312 ) <anticypherNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Tuesday December 07, 2004 @11:56AM (#11019806) Homepage
    1.0 means they have transitioned from alpha grade early release project to a first beta release.

    Thunderbird is missing too many basic features to allow it to be rolled out to corporate users, or family members, or just about anyone not 100% geek. It still doesn't handle outgoing servers correctly. Filtering is difficult to use, can't deal with IMAP correctly, and sometimes just doesn't work at all.

    The spam filtering still needs a lot of work, there needs to be an option to white list the entire set of local (and/or ldap) address books, not just a single one. When people keep separate address books for business and personal contacts, you then have to choose which book to whitelist. There's been a bug in bugzilla for quite a while now on that one.

    LDAP incompatibilities, IMAP SSL handling, customisable UI, IPv6 support, the list goes on and on. I would have prefered if the dev team spent a few more months dealing with all the little problems that will keep this entirely out of business rollouts, and fixed the minor bugs which have lingered forever.

    Maybe with the 1.0 early beta release, the current dev team will move on, and more capable Open Source volunteers will step up and finish the job. I, like many others, were driven away from the forums and bugzilla because of hostile attitudes and incessant bickering over extremely minor points. We tried to help, but some FLOSS projects aren't as deserving as others.

    I haven't been able to convince anyone to switch over to 0.9 from outlook, or even Pine (so you know its got to suck). No major feature requests were addressed between 0.9 and 1.0, this is just a minor incremental release.

    Yeah, call me cranky too!
    the AC

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